LOS ANGELES – When a lifelong Democrat Mayra Gomez told her 21-year-old son five months ago that she was voting for Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential election, she cut him short.
“You told me straight away,” You’re not my mother anymore, because you vote for Trump ‘, “Gomez, 41, who works for Milwaukee.
“The damage has been done. In the minds of the people, Trump is a beast. It hurts. There are people who don’t talk to me anymore, and I’m not sure that will change, ”said Gomez, who is a supporter of Trump’s anti-immigration and economic management.
Gomez is not alone in assuming that the painful divisions between family and friends between Trump’s chaotic presidency will be difficult, if not impossible, to fix, or he has resigned.
In interviews with 10 voters – five Trump supporters and five Democratic Alliance candidate Joe Biden – few could see the tarnished human relationship created by Trump’s position of complete healing, and many of them believed he was doomed.
Throughout his nearly two-year presidency Trump has sparked strong emotions between supporters and opponents. Many of his supporters are proud of his immigration stance, the appointment of traditional judges, his determination to breathe life into the assembly and his harsh speech, which they call a straightforward speech.
Democrats and other critics see the former architect and realist as a threat to American democracy, a radical liar and racist who abuses the novel Coronavirus, which has killed more than 230,000 people in the United States to date. Trump dismisses those signs as “false news.”
Now, as Trump follows Biden to the polls, people are beginning to question whether the breakdown caused by one of the most divisive leaders in U.S. history could be cured if Trump lost the election.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think national healing is as easy as changing a president,” said Jaime Saal, a psychiatrist at the Rochester Center for Behavioral Medicine in Rochester Hills, Michigan.
Saal said tensions in personal relations have increased as political, health and social forces face the United States. You often see customers who have political conflicts with their siblings, parents or in-laws, as opposed to married people.
THE NEIGHBOR VS THE NEIGHBOR
Trump’s 2016 election split families, severed ties and turned neighbor against neighbor. Many have turned to Facebook and Twitter to bring up unrestricted posts that hit Trump and his many critics, while the president’s tweets have fueled controversy.
A September report by the neutral Pew Research Center found that about 80% of Trump and Biden supporters say they have few or no friends who support someone else.
A poll by the Gallup polling agency in January found that Trump’s third year in office had set a new record for party divisions. While 89% of Republicans approve of Trump’s tenure in office in 2019, only 7% of Democrats think he is doing a good job.
Gayle McCormick, 77, who broke up with her husband William, 81, after voting for Trump in 2016, said, “I think Trump’s legacy will take a long time to recover.”
The two still spend time together, although now based in Vancouver, he is in Alaska. He has been cut off from other relatives and friends who are Trump supporters.
He is not sure if those conflicts with friends and family will ever be resolved, because each one believes that the other has a completely value plan.
Democrat Rosanna Guadagno, 49, said her brother denied her after she refused to support Trump four years ago. He was told the news three days after he sent an email to his daughter-in-law.
“I was taken out of everything about her death, and it was devastating,” said Guadagno, a sociologist working at Stanford University, California.
THE UNFORGETTABLE WORLD OF FLESH
Sarah Guth, 39, a Spanish interpreter in Denver, Colorado, said she cut off a few friends who support Trump in her life. He could not reconcile their support on issues such as the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the southern border, or even Trump himself after being caught in the act of boasting about women.
He also stopped talking to his father who voted for Trump a few months after the 2016 election. The two are now talking, but avoid politics.
Guth said some of his friends could not accept his support from the candidate – Joe Biden – who chose to add to the abortion question.
“We have a basic disagreement on these basics. It showed both sides that we really have nothing in common. I don’t believe that will change in the post-Trump era. ”
Trump’s staunch supporter Dave Wallace, 65, a retired oil industry sales manager in West Chester, Pennsylvania, has high hopes for the disputed families in the country behind Trump.
“I think it’s just Trump, the way he makes people feel.
I think the angst will go down when we get back to the mainstream politician who doesn’t annoy the people. “
Jay J. Van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, said that this “political system” was not only a nation, but a moral one.
“Trump is like an earthquake stimulant that has already divided the two continents of thought. Once the Earth is divided, there is no going back. This is a time marked in our history when people had to jump from one side to the other. And depending on which side you choose, that will be the course of a lifetime, ”he said.
Hammond said he first realized his relationship with his mother was in jeopardy shortly after the 2016 election when he defended Clinton while driving with his mother.
And if I don’t want to respect his politics, I can get out of the car. ”
Bonnie Coughlin, 65, has voted for Republicans for the rest of her life, except in 2016 when she supported a candidate. This time he was ready for Biden, even holding a small meeting on the sidewalk near Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania.
Raised in a Republican family, which is still a tradition in Missouri, he says his relationship with his sister, father and other cousins - all of Trump’s zealous supporters – has been disrupted.
Coughlin says he still loves them, but “I look at them differently.